With 'Finding Neverland,' Diane Paulus scores again

Saturday

Aug 16, 2014 at 7:30 AM

ART.'s artistic director will no doubt add to the string of Tony Awards she already wears on her belt.

By Iris FangerFor The Patriot Ledger

A tiny ball of light that is Peter Pan’s Tinkerbell brings up the curtain on “Finding Neverland,” the American Repertory Theater’s world premiere musical headed for Broadway in the spring. Staged by Cambridge wunderkind Diane Paulus, artistic director of the theater, “Finding Neverland” will no doubt add to the string of Tony Awards she already wears on her belt.

Paulus and her choreographer, Mia Michaels, have invested the material with imagination and energy to create a crowd pleaser of a show that had the audience members on their feet with excitement by the end of the first press performance this past week.

“Finding Neverland” is based on the somewhat twee film of the same name that starred Johnny Depp as the troubled playwright James M. Barrie, who seems to be suffering writer’s block as well as losing his wife at the beginning of the story. After he meets the fatherless Llewelyn Davies family of four boys and their mother, Sylvia, and becomes a playmate to the children (and perhaps something more to their parent), Barrie is inspired to write his beloved classic “Peter Pan.” Both the film and the musical, based on the true story of the friendship, incorporate elements of fantasy and references to the play.

With a book by playwright and film writer James Graham and a score and lyrics by Gary Barlow and Eliot Kennedy – all Brits – the work also incorporates a valentine to turn-of-the-20th-century English theater.

The action moves from Barrie’s home, where his perfectionist wife, Mary, tries to make a proper gentleman of him, to Kensington Garden and the children’s home for the games he plays with the Davies family, to backstage at the London theater of Charles Frohman, Barrie’s frequent producer.

The upstairs-downstairs theme, so familiar from television series like “Downton Abbey,” is carried by an ensemble of dancing servants who transform into a corps of eccentric British actors on demand.

The show has been cast from an A-list of American and English actor-singer-dancers, led by Jeremy Jordan (leading role in “Newsies” on Broadway) as J.M. Barrie; Laura Michelle Kelly (“Mary Poppins” in London and New York), who is marvelous as Sylvia; and Michael McGrath (multiple Broadway roles) as Frohman and Captain Hook. The veteran musical star Carolee Carmello plays Mrs. Du Maurier, the children’s proper grandmother, with Aidan Gemme, a most assured child actor, as Peter Llewelyn Davies.

To the credit of Paulus, she has kept the cast and orchestra small, trying not to overwhelm the delicate material. If her slant underplays the concerns raised at the time about Barrie’s true relationship to the boys, spawning dark rumors, so be it in the world of commercial theater that aims for family-friendly productions.

Michaels’ choreography embellishes nearly every scene, inventive in its mix of styles, from ballet to contemporary to club moves, but also using familiar props and settings such as leaping onto table tops for dance floors, and long poles to stamp out the rhythms of a song. Nonetheless, the numbers move things along smartly, conveying the joy of childhood play.

The score and lyrics are pleasant but not memorable, except for the duet “When Your Feet Don’t Touch the Ground” for Barrie and young Peter, and the lilt of the theme song, “Neverland.” The scenic design by Scott Pask, lighting by Philip S. Rosenberg and illusions designed by Paul Kieve contribute enormously to the wonders onstage.

If Paulus sometimes seems to be straying into the Victoriana of Alice’s Wonderland as well as Peter’s Neverland, or even a new version of “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder,” currently on Broadway, no matter. And one might suggest that the love story between Sylvia and Barrie is overripe. However, at final curtain, when the audience of adults clapped loudly to keep Tinkerbell’s light burning, there was not a dry eye in the house. Don’t miss this one.